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Rory Fletcher
Personality Rory is a sorrowful person at her core. There's something about the idea of outliving everyone you come to care for that leaves her mildly depressed. But even before she was Embraced, she had a knack for cold distance birthed from living through some of the hardest times in recent history. Loss seems to be a defining element of her life, and in an effort to avoid that loss, she's adopted this distance. This neutrality. But the truth remains that, at her core, she does care for others, particularly those still living humans wandering around with no idea of the nightmares walking the earth. She finds it difficult to kill or be cruel without extreme provocation. And being an instrument of loss for others, it never seems to sit very well with her. She does her best to /hide/ this fact, but it does tend to shine through. Sheet Attributes: : Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3 : Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 3, Appearance 5 ::*'Appearance Specialty:' Stone Cold : Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3 Abilities: : Talents: Athletics 1, Dodge 3, Insight 3, Integrity 2, Intimidation 2, Resistance 1, Vigilance 2 : Skills: Performance (Accents, Singing) 4, Research 3, Technology 3 (Security Devices, Computers) ::*'Performance Specialty:' Swing Jazz (1940's style) : Knowledges: Computer 4, Enigmas 3, Investigation 4, Linguistics 3 (German, Russian, Korean, Arabic) ::*'Computer Specialty:' Hacking ::*'Investigation Specialty:' Evidence Advantages: : Backgrounds: Generation 4, Resources 2, Herd 1, Allies 1 : Virtues: Conscience 3, Courage 4, Self Control 3 : Disciplines: Fortitude 2, Melpominee 1 : Blood Pool: 14 : Willpower: 8 : Humanity: 7 : Clan Weakness: The Daughters of Cacophony are so caught up in their music that they hear it constantly. As a result of this distraction, the difficulties of all a Daughter's Perception rolls are increased by one. Additionally, a Daughter's Vigilance can never exceed three (3). : Merits: Blush of Health (2), Black Market Ties (3), Poker Face (My P-poker Face) (2) : Flaws: Ward (3), Lifesaver (3), Infamous Sire (1) ;Freebies (39) Merits: -7 Flaws: +7 Talents: -2 Skills: -2 Knowledges: -18 Attributes: -10 Humanity: -2 Willpower: -4 Backgrounds: -1 Merits & Flaws ;Merits *'Blush of Health' ::A gift from her sire, she appears closer to a human than most other vampires. It's a plus when working so close with them. *'Black Market Ties' ::Over the years she worked as a PI, she got in contact with the black market for weapons and information and so forth. They've never seen her, and as flips aliases with them from time to time, each one having the former's recommendation. *'Poker Face' ::Her cold demeanor was learned over the years she worked with the government. Never one to give herself away. ;Flaws *'Ward' ::Rory works as Head of Security for Alan Ortolani, mafia son here in Crystal Springs. The operation was in New York, but as he comes into an age to take more of a hand in the family business (read: about nineteen), he's moved to his dad's town. And his security team has come, too. *'Lifesaver' ::It's an odd affliction she's just never been able to shake. She cares about human life. Those humans that are still not-dead rather than undead. She has a difficult time killing outright or watching such things being done in her presences. *'Infamous Sire' ::Rory was turned by a Son of Discord. Mosley Dawson worked with the US government in the nineteen forties and fifties, and technically didn't exist as part of their protection program for him and others like him. His true nature was kept a secret as long as he provided the government with information about his kind and other supernaturals. Even though this information was often lies to keep the government in confusion, his reputation among other vampires is not a good one, even among those who don't care about his son of discord status. Backgrounds *'Generation' ::Mosley Dawson was the favorite toy of a rather powerful Daughter of Cacophony. Why she decided to turn him, no one really knows, but she and he both were hunted for centuries over it. She was found, he is still at large. *'Resources' ::She makes more, but that money tends to funnel out into her contacts and allies through the course of her duty. But, what she keeps for herself is just enough for a woman alone to live on comfortably. *'Herd' ::This consists of a handful of the employees of Mister Ortolani. *'Allies' ::CIA Agent Eddie Hawk. Rory's government connection. They met through her sire, and worked together several times over recent years. Off the record, of course. They've been known to pull each other into trouble from time to time. Officially, Eddie is Rory's 'handler', keeping an eye on her for the government, but loyalty has swung more toward her in this case. Advancement Advancement History History I was too young to really remember the end of World war I, but my grandfather would tell me stories about it as I grew up. Exciting, adventurous and heavily romanticized stories that gave my young mind an... obsession about war. My father would get so angry to hear my grandfather tell these stories. And more so when he learned he and my grandmother were teaching me German. But, all it would take was a pitiful look from his beautiful daughter and he would accept with a sigh and do his best to ignore it. I was still a young thing through the roaring twenties, my memories are mostly of my mother stumbling home in the early morning light, drunk. And much to my father's chagrin. But then, she was also very beautiful, and he had a difficult time staying upset. Or perhaps, being able to tell her he found her behavior unacceptable. He did find other ways, eventually. He sold our home in the city and moved us to the midwest. To a farm. My mother was /devastated/. He didn't know, but she kept in contact with her old... /friends/ from the city. She also made alcohol in our bathtub. She did a lot of things he was too busy to notice. Or didn't want to notice in his new, idyllic world. What we all noticed was the effects of Black Tuesday, the crash in Twenty-Nine. At the heart of the dust bowl, we were among those poor souls whose lives were destroyed by pour planning and execution. By this time, I was shifting from child to young woman, and my father... tried to keep myself and my mother from notice as we left the farm and traveled back toward the East Coast. He feared what desperation would drive other men to, I suppose. But the rumor of jobs was too great to pass up. Of course, those rumors were heard by everyone, and most of them were only partly true. But we wouldn't know that until we made the journey. The traveling... turned out to be too much for my grandparents. Grandmother died first, she just didn't wake up one morning. We buried her on the side of the road. My grandfather didn't last two weeks with her gone. And suddenly, we were three. The traveling did not go well. We had no money, very little food. When the truck ran out of gas we had to walk the rest of the way. We were robbed at one point and had even /less/ food... My father practically stopped eating to make sure my mother and I were fed. But it wasn't starvation that killed him. It was other travelers after my mother and I. I... I'll just skip over what happened there. Taken, but still traveling toward New York, my mother took only one week of that situation before she was able to steal one of the men's guns and get us out of there. On the upside, we were able to take as much food as we could carry from their stores. It was a time when I would intimately learn the advantages and disadvantages that came along with my maturing into a rather attractive woman. My mother had given me a few choice warnings about it, but that trip really drilled them in. We did eventually reach New York, and the house of one of my mother's friends. He was a General in the Army and one in a long line of rich bastards. Steele. Donald Steele. He was /so/ very heartsore at hearing that my mother was so recently widowed. And being the kind, generous man that he was, he gave her a job right in his own home. What a humanitarian. I wasn't young enough to miss what was really going on, but none of us ever spoke on it, politely pretending she was his secretary or housekeeper or whatever. And me? I was given to his son. Captain Reggie Steele. For appearances, I slept in Reggie's room... but he really wasn't interested in girls, as it turned out. It was our secret. I never told a soul. And more, I helped put on a show that made it appear to everyone that he was, in fact, /very/ interested. He once told me it was the best gift anyone had ever given him. So life steadied out for us. Eventually, I even started doing /actual/ secretarial work for the Steeles, at their offices. This was in the few years before the war. Or, at least, before the US joined the war. But it was a part of my job to help them interview refugees from Germany about what Hilter's Germany was really like. I remember one of them commenting that my accent made me sound like a Berlin butcher's wife. Low class, you know. But one of the people, not some high class daughter of privilege. That would stick with me for years, that comment. I was with Reggie when the news came about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. By then, he and I were intensely close friends. Never before and never since have I had someone... that meant as much to me as he did. I would have married him. Not out of romantic love, but love all the same. But that day... that report... we both knew what it meant. He was off to war. I went with him as far as the airfield, kissed him goodbye and never heard from him again. He died in the war, of course. My mother died shortly after we declared war on Japan and joined in the fray. I sat with her over the last days of her life, when she was coughing up blood and laying in a pool of her own sweat. I used to hate to admit that when she died... it came as a relief to me personally. These days... I guess I've gotten used to admitting it. I left the Steele house then. Reggie had gifted me a rather nice sum of money and Donald got me a contact with the USO. And I became a singer. As it turned out, I actually had some natural talent. Enough that the boys came back for more reasons that just my pretty face. But my looks... I'd learned to force a distance, a coldness between myself and others. Don't smile too much, don't seem so welcoming. It didn't discourage everyone, but most it did. But, I wanted to do more. More for the war effort. So, I joined up. WACs. And I was moved into an office to do administrative things. It didn't feel like much, honestly, but I did get the nice uniform. I even still have it in a trunk with my other keepsakes and such from times passed. But, I worked for a man named Mosley Dawson. He was, supposedly, in charge of supply distribution to the troops. But, you know... I wasn't /dumb/. I noticed how he would have to leave suddenly on 'urgent business'. I would have to turn in my notepads after dictation. I would dictate letters about his vacations to the seashore with a wife he didn't have, in which he felt the need to detail out just how many birds he saw diving for fish. /So/ /obvious/. I did eventually get him to admit he was a spy. Sort of. He didn't actually /admit/ it, it was more like, I badgered him until he told me I was a very troublesome woman and stopped his denials. And started using me as a back up translator. I would sit in meetings, listening to his translators as they read letters or retold witness accounts. I helped him spot the double agents. There were a few. Then there came a day... a friend of mine came to see me, asking me if I would come sing with her for some benefit. I hadn't sung for a while, and I did like it, so I agreed. It was nineteen forty-three. I remember very clearly. Mosley was there, at the benefit. It was the first time he'd even heard that I knew anything about singing. He told me later... that between my face and my voice, he felt it was his duty to preserve me. That watching me wilt and my talent wane would be a true tragedy. And that night, when he took me home with him... well, I thought something intimate was going to happen, but I was completely wrong on just what it was. I hated him for a long time. A /long/ time. Once he explained what he was and what he'd done to me... I hated him. He seemed mostly amused by that. And given that I was assigned to him, I was stuck with him. I put in for transfers, but I was considered a security hazard if I was anywhere but where I was. Knew too much. I became... the person he relied on to get him information. To be his voice when he needed one. Until one day... One of their operatives was found dead, a man who had the ear and trust of one of the Reich's golden boys. And just as he'd passed along information vital to the effort. The Germans were developing a new superweapon. Unfortunately, the operative wasn't able to get the /location/ of the development center. Our side needed it. And the golden boy needed a nanny for his children. And me with my Berlin butcher's wife accent. I had two weeks. It was the start of what would turn out to be a strategy Mosley and I would use through the Korean Police Action, the Cold War, the Gulf War... Mostly, he was the one who did the dangerous parts. I was no fighter. I was the information, the mouthpiece, the language monkey, the decoder and puzzle-solver and later, the computer wizard. He beat things up. It was an odd sort of pairing. He learned every ancient style of fighting he could get his hands of while I learned every new piece of technology /I/ could get my hands on. He was disappointed that I spent more time with mundane, mortal skills than the ones he'd passed on to me through our shared blood. But he was grateful enough when we were on the job. Who else was going to bypass all those lovely security systems and set up fake identities and access the set of blueprints that actually /has/ the secret closet or whatever. Not his fists, that's for sure. The set up worked well for me, since I was rarely put in a position of having to fight or kill. The one time I had to, we found out that it just wasn't in me. Moe was... disappointed. He was disappointed a lot. In between wars, I did work as a PI. That's when I made my connections to the underground. Friends in high and low places. And I was /good/ at it. Am good at it. Those connections are difficult to keep up when you're trying to avoid the fact that you're pretty much immortal. But I managed. It was a good thing I'd learned how to do things on my own, too, because the day came when Mosley had to leave me. He was being hunted, of course, for being what he was. The Daughters, they don't tend to like us making boys and they were finally onto his location. So, in the mid-nineties, after something like fifty years of working together... he disappeared. I haven't heard from him since. He warned me to lie if I ever needed to name my sire and left. I sometimes wonder if he made it. I sometimes think he really didn't deserve to. I still work with the government sometimes. As a free agent. I have this man in the CIA who calls me with work, or when they need some help. But mostly, I'm left to do my own thing. And recently, that's been getting in with a mafia prince. Head of Security for his home, wherever he chooses to make it. Having a background of getting /through/ expensive security in its various forms certainly helps safeguarding his. I said that like it was easy. Getting in with the mafia when you look like I do... or are a woman at all, I suspect, at least with these guys... they seem to expect that you want to be their lover. Proving that you're useful outside the bedroom and getting them to stop treating you like meat is something of a challenge. I had to work harder, longer and /better/ than everyone else. It took years to get them to stop slapping my ass when I'd walk by or whistling or making their /comments/. And I'm no fighter, as you know, so slapping them only does so much. No. I had to prove myself their equal by being their better. But, I think it was worth it. I have a good, respectable job, a comfortable position in life and a new city to learn as Alan goes to join the rest of the Ortolani family in Crystal Springs. Miscellaneous Category:Past PCs